Microwave ovens have become increasingly popular because of their convenience and shortened cooking times. Microwave ovens are particularly convenient and useful for reheating prepared food which has already been cooked.
Food becomes cooked in a microwave oven by being irradiated with microwaves. The microwave radiation penetrates the food and causes the molecules of the food to align themselves continually in different directions. This agitation uniformly and rapidly heats up the food.
Some food products are packaged and sold in a plastic container or film in which the food can be conveniently heated in a microwave oven. The plastic enclosure permits passage of the microwaves through the plastic, and also retains cooking liquids or sauces without spilling. Various cuts of meat, as well as vegetables, can be cooked in this manner. One example of such a food product is barbecue pork ribs.
Pork loin backribs and pork spareribs are typically marketed in a plastic film for heating in the microwave. With this conventional packaging, the ribs are intended to be positioned flat against the bottom surface of the microwave oven during the cooking process. However, the ribs are often quite long, usually being on the order of twenty inches (20"), so that the ribs are too large for the cavity of many microwave ovens.
Even if the microwave oven is large enough, this method results in overheating of the outside edges of the ribs in order to fully cook the middle portion, because the microwave oven heats from the outside to the center. As a result, the pork ribs are not heated uniformly. This is a particular problem with barbecue pork ribs because of their density and irregular thicknesses.
To avoid these problems, the consumer must cut up the ribs into smaller portions and heat the portions separately, which is inconvenient. It can also be a messy process, because the ribs are typically packaged with a sauce or marinade which spills out when the ribs are cut into smaller portions.
The present invention addresses these and many other problems associated with currently available cooking packages and cooking methods.